The IVOA Data Access Layer (DAL) working group is defining a Simple Spectral Access (SSA) protocol for accessing 1D spectra and SEDs. To help plan this effort a survey was conducted to provide use-cases to guide the design. This poster summarizes the results from the point of view of both the data provider and the data consumer.

The survey shows that a wide variety of spectroscopic data is readily available on-line. Data structures and qualitative aspects, however, vary substantially. A preliminary analysis shows that the definition of a common format for spectra is a big challenge. Therefore, the first step is to concentrate on the access protocol and then to work on the formal representation in a standard format based on a spectral data model.